Comments on: Admit nothing, explain nothing and apologize for nothinghttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/
A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspectiveFri, 09 Dec 2016 14:23:43 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7By: Andyhttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57691
Fri, 03 Sep 2004 21:00:09 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57691It is a very good book. I’ve just started and have reached the part where Gabriel Kolko and Peter Irons are diminishing the massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets [Katyn Forest]. Irony is that the GORBACHEV investigation of 1990 located both Pyotr Soprunenko [KGB commander of all camps in which the Soviets interned the Poles] and Vladimir Tokaryev [KGB commander at Kalinin]. Stalin’s order was signed March 5 1940, and Tokaryev – like a Nazi death camp commandant – had to kill 250 Polish officers per night across April 1940. Do Kolko and Irons similarly diminish the Holocaust? THEY MIGHT.

So in a way it quickly becomes a very sad book, and not because of the murder and bloodshed but because of the liberal denial, or worse, acceptance of that as the fruition of dreams and the best which could be expected. They don’t seem to set very high or ‘rigorous’ standards for themselves, their associates, or – by default – anybody else [though of course they freely carp and criticize].

Andy

]]>By: Tomhttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57690
Fri, 20 Aug 2004 21:40:50 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57690Mostly off-topic: If you want people to take your statements as serious, sober suggetions, possibly true, and thus deserving real consideration, you probably shouldn’t use as a screen name “Luni—“. I’m just saying…
]]>By: Luniversalhttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57689
Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:12:02 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57689Shawn: “It is of course complete rubbish. At most only Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle could reasonably be called neocons, and they are not the only voices in the administration.”

Colin Powell told Bob Woodward that the neocons had become a shadow government after 9/11. Shawn thinks the realists stayed on top because the US only attacked Iraq instead of knocking off all the PNAC’s other targets simultaneously. Wow, such restraint already.

FYI, Lew Rockwell’s site isn’t “libertarian left”. It is anarcho-capitalist with minarchist and paleocon leanings. It is interested in the founding principles of the USA’s foreign policy and unimpressed by this left/right labelling scam, judging statists and warmongers by their deeds. Ditto http://www.antiwar.com.

“Osama bin Laden declared war against the US. He backed up that declaration with attacks on thousands of innocent civlians around the word, the attack on the USS Cole, and the 911 atrocity. To call our nations leader a warmonger and imperialist for responding to that and choosing to defeat those who initiated force against us is sick and immoral.”

None of which has anything whatever to do with illegally invading Iraq, but what the hell– let’s not be fussy about whom we kill, we don’t want the rest of the world to feel sorry for us, do we?

Incidentally, Shawn, accusing everybody who disagrees with you of insanity and immorality is what those terrible “reds” used to do to their dissidents.

]]>By: Al Mavivahttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57688
Fri, 20 Aug 2004 00:49:57 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57688Had we a shred of integrity or honor, we’d lynch the academicians who for so long covered up, extemporized for, preached on behalf of, and recruited to help the murderous reds. They did a lot of damage to our social fabric, and it seems to me we owe the treasonous bastards one. At a bare minimum, we’d exile whole English Lit, History, Poli Sci and Law faculties to some modern penal colony – perhaps we could find a guano island or some place equally suitable.

True, very few of them did any of the actual wet work. They merely sharpened the knives, carried the cloak, opened the door for, and cheered on the blood-soaked communists.

Kind of like what Jimmah Carta does for Castro and Kim Jong Il these days, only on a much wider scale.

This is the myth that the Bush admin is run by neocon’s, and that all neocon’s are secretly Trotskyite’s out for world revolution. Hang on a minute while I get my tin foil hat.

It is of course complete rubbish. At most only Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle could reasonably be called neocons, and they are not the only voices in the administration.

In fact, since Sept.11 Bush has run a realist foriegn policy, not a neoconservative one. Anyone familiar with the ideas of neocon’s like Irving Kristol and Max Boot would know this. If anything, Bush’s response to 911 has been something of a dissapointment to neocons. Neocons wanted a total Middle East strategy combined with massive military enlargement. Instead Bush and Rummy have taken a minimalist approach and resisted calls for an enlargement of the Army.

“The principled criticism of Bush’s banal and foredoomed stabs at world domination”

Oh please, grow up. Since Sept.11 we have taken out two regimes in two countrys, one of which was the base of al-Qaeda, those responsible for the worst attack on American citizens since Pearl Harbour, and the other which we had been in conflict with since 1991 because of Saddam’s aggression.

Two countrys, moreover, two countrys AFTER the horror of Sept.11, does not make for world domination, and claiming it does is truly stupid,

There is nothing principled about the criticisms of Bush from the libertarian left, LewRockwell included. They are nothing but the fact free rantings of conspiracy theorist nutbars.

” The neocons and liberventionists are the real traitors to Americanism.”

The real traitors are those vile scum on the libertarian left who used the 911 atrocity as an excuse to spit on their country and its military.

Osama bin Laden decalred war against the US. He backed up that declaration with attacks on thousands of innocent civlians around the word, the attack on the USS Cole, and the 911 atrocity. To call our nations leader a warmonger and imperialist for responding to that and choosing to defeat those who initiated force against us is sick and immoral.

]]>By: Luniversalhttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57686
Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:41:22 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57686“America is different, mainly because our people deep down have libertarian and individualist tendencies that either never existed or have been extinguished long ago most everywhere else.”

Too deep down ever to be revived, judging by their panicky acceptance of the USA Patriot Act, which most congressmen voted through without reading.

Ah, America, that bastion of resistance to socialism where the State already takes over 30% of GDP and more than half the land west of the Mississippi/Missouri is owned by the Federal government!

“The one reason I tend to defend him is I know where the criticism of him comes from: The maxist-lunatic-left.”

Au contraire, Bush’s intellectual acolytes are themselves direct descendants of that very faction. Realising the impossibility of achieving their universalist fantasies through mass action (communism), this manipulative post-Trotskyite elite– who masquerade as “neoconservatives”– switched to operating through the “world’s only hyperpower” and through global corporations which are at least as sinister, and a lot less accountable than, the UNO.

The principled criticism of Bush’s banal and foredoomed stabs at world domination comes from the sort of American who has always preferred a republic of freemen to a warfare/welfare empire. They remain loyal to the foreign policy tenets of the Founders. The neocons and liberventionists are the real traitors to Americanism.

]]>By: DSpearshttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57685
Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:05:15 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57685“For all his many faults (and he indeed has many) there are much worse people than Mr Bush about. And although I oppose many of his policies (wild government spending and so forth) I am very wary of siding with the enemies of Mr Bush – as behind many of the antiBush (or generally anti America) moverments are wicked men and women, people who know at least as much about Marxism as any of us do and who support it for the very reasons it should be opposed.”

This is where the LewRockwells and the extreme libertarian left go astray in my mind. Unfortunately these people can be Useful Idiots just like the various Democratic Socialist factions in Europe and America are. Bush is certainly not perfect, but the one reason I tend to defend him is I know where the criticism of him comes from: The maxist-lunatic-left.

As badly as the various libertarian sects like to criticize America and lump it in with all the other statist governments in the world, America is different, mainly because our people deep down have libertarian and individualist tendencies that either never existed or have been extinguished long ago most everywhere else. These characterostics have more than once kept America from going over the abyss into socialism and totalistarianism both after the Civil War and during the great depression and after WWII, just to name a few.

Even if you listen to his worst critics, the people behind Bush in the end are just trying to make a profit, an impulse libertarians should find no fault with. The people behind the Bush haters are trying to clear the way for world Socialism under one world govenment administered by the UN.

I know what is worse.

]]>By: Freddiesbackhttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57684
Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:02:59 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57684Solovetsky: “No doubt their lobbyists will soon be trying to silence “hateful antisemitic” discussion of what really happened to Christian Russia between Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station and Trotsky’s exile.”

Jacob: “Would you please, kindly, take your “ideas” to some other site and get lost?”

Q.E.D.

]]>By: Paul Markshttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57683
Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:55:51 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57683I apologize for the many typing errors in my comment. My only excuse is that reading the post (and some of the comments) moved old memories and distracted me.

A fully admit that this is a poor exuse and again apologize.

]]>By: Paul Markshttps://www.samizdata.net/2004/08/admit-nothing-explain-nothing/#comment-57682
Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:46:47 +0000http://192.168.200.139/?p=6541#comment-57682Well first, the Soviets were the enemies of most Jewish people from day one (after all most Jews were either petty traders or other such – not people who did well under “War Communism”).

Later, when Stalin came to power, Jews were attacked because they were Jews (not just for class reasons)

And (as should be well known) many of the greatest foes of socialism (Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Friedman) have been Jews.

Yes many Jews did feel alienated from society (because of Progroms and the long history of wicked treatment that went before them). And yes many Jews have been led by their interest in ideas into the horrible folly of socialism.

However, what percentage of Jews were Communists in the Russia of 1917? Do the antisemites know, or care?

As for the United States. Have even 5% of Jews ever supported the Communists? Ture even 5% would be a much higher percentage than the general population – but what about the other 95%?

“He would say all this, look at his family name” – true although I am an Anglican and my “blood” is mostly Irish and English I do have “Jewish blood” in me. So I will stop talking about this matter.

As for leftists (of whatever ethic origin), they wish to shut down discussion of the past because they do not wish to be shown to have been wrong. And (in some cases) they also wish to cover up shameful deeds in their own past.

The left have been very successfull. Few people know that the the Marxists in both Russia and China killed TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and that they were (and are) dedicated to taking over the world – i.e. no nation (no matter how noninterventionist its policy) was to be spared.

With the collapse of the world economic life (after a total Marxist world take over) their would have no prices of capital goods (or anything else) in free countries for the Marxists to copy (because there would have been no even semi free areas).

The great majority of the population of the planet could not be sustained in the long term by world statism. Most people would have died and civilization would have died with them. The end result of total victory for the Marxists would have evil to the point of of being satanic.

I doubt if even one in a hundred people knows the above.

Take even a “little thing” like the Vietnam war. When I was young (in the late 1970’s) the leftists faced a problem. Even if the vast numbers of murders in Communist Vietnam could be kept from public attention the millions of “boat people” could not.

However, influnce and hard work have solved the leftist problem – few people now remember the boat people (or what they had to say). Most people have taught to associate the word “Vietnam” with American wickedness.

As for Cambodia: It suited the pro Soviet Marxist of Vietnam to allow the actions of the pro Chinese Marxists in Cambodia to become known – these actions were the mass killing of about one third of the entire population of Cambodia.

However, if these actions are now remembered at all they are blamed on American bombing – which supposedly drove Pol Pot and his friends mad and/or brought them to power (such nonsense was published in the British “Independent on Sunday” only a few days ago).

For all his many faults (and he indeed has many) there are much worse people than Mr Bush about. And although I oppose many of his policies (wild government spending and so forth) I am very wary of siding with the enemies of Mr Bush – as behind many of the antiBush (or generally anti America) moverments are wicked men and women, people who know at least as much about Marxism as any of us do and who support it for the very reasons it should be opposed.

It is well to remember in these days of concentration on radical Muslims, that the Marxists have not gone away and nor are the sleeping.

Any ideology that lumps railroad parcelling in the same category with systemic, intentional mass murder by the state is not to be taken seriously. The fact that you can’t seem to see the difference relegates you to the lunatic fringe.

America’s history is not perfect, but no society on earth has ever lived up to Rothbardian standards.

Well you’ve missed the point then I guess. I said pretty much what you said in that the left uses history in a reactionary way. What I said (or intended to say) is that history up through the 50’s was sanitized by the then reigning conservative elements in academia. The US was merely invoking God given rights of manifest destiny to steam roll to the Pacific, and anything that stood in the way was bad, and any Statist construct was good.

The true frizzy hairs, in reaction to that canon, swung far in the other direction to the left dominant structure we have today. All I said, in trying to tap into objective, versus subjective, history is that I wish history, pre-50’s and post 50’s, wasn’t so distorted. I certainly didn’t compare railroads to mass murder of the ultra-Statists. I just wanted to show that history of rugged pioneers a la John Wayne, or the good ole Union boys in blue fighting for a just cause and much else of the history we (or at least I) was taught was through a generally traditional/conservative filter that wore off the rough edges of reality.

We now have a history dominated by apologists of left idealists whereas we once had it dominated by right idealists. Those who are neither, but are individualists, are left out in the cold. Perhaps this is functionally so in that history by necessity generalizes and views itself through broad bases and strata’s of people and causes versus the impact of various Statist mentalities on individuals.

Regardless, the history of the US is not as lily-white as the average 50’s historian would portray, nor is it as vile as the average 00’s historian would portray it. I do think that the average left historian takes much of what is bad of US history and takes it out of context of the times in which all countries operated shamefully (at least in terms of how an individualist/libertarian would view it).